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Author Topic: Colormanaging scanned negatives - How to do best ?  (Read 21424 times)

Mark D Segal

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Re: Colormanaging scanned negatives - How to do best ?
« Reply #20 on: February 19, 2012, 09:49:26 am »

And the funny thing is:
Totally controlled and calibrated colors aren't necessarily beautiful, maybe not even THE prerequisite to get beautiful color rendition.
Postprocessing skills, a good calibrated monitor and a good eye are most likely much more important ....

Yes, from the artistic perspective this is really true; that said, good artistry still requires control over one's medium and that control starts with reliable methods and techniques, and so much the better if they are also efficient. Not to say that "good art" isn't also created by random walks, but that's not the main point.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
Author: "Scanning Workflows with SilverFast 8....."

Christoph C. Feldhaim

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Re: Colormanaging scanned negatives - How to do best ?
« Reply #21 on: February 19, 2012, 10:53:40 am »

Yes, from the artistic perspective this is really true; that said, good artistry still requires control over one's medium and that control starts with reliable methods and techniques, and so much the better if they are also efficient. Not to say that "good art" isn't also created by random walks, but that's not the main point.

Umm ... yes ... I'm a nursery child as you can see here:
(shameless plug)
The less I master the technique, the more I become infantile ...  :P

Mark D Segal

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Re: Colormanaging scanned negatives - How to do best ?
« Reply #22 on: February 19, 2012, 11:18:31 am »

You're being modest or pulling my leg - some really nice work on your website, so you know what you are doing, and it isn't random walks! Interesting how a generation and a continent apart we had similar parental experiences with a similar outcome.........anyhow I digress.

The real point about this post is that I went back to SilverFast to re-try a few things. Apart from the selection and adjustment of the Negafix Profile, the choice of colour space is the only thing that matters for colour management of a negative scan in SF8 Preferences; for my Nikon SC 5000-ED, ProPhoto is too wide (too much influence of reds) but ARGB(98) produces much better behaved colours.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Christoph C. Feldhaim

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Re: Colormanaging scanned negatives - How to do best ?
« Reply #23 on: February 19, 2012, 01:29:21 pm »

I changed my CMS setings to the following:

Input -> Working Space: ICM
Working Space -> Monitor: ICM
Working Space -> Output: RGB

Input: SF_T(Nikon LS 9000 Slide)
Internal: None
Output/Printer: None

No embedding

When I open the file in PS I ASSIGN the SF_T(Nikon LS 9000 Slide) profile and immediately CONVERT to Holmes Chroma 100 (Yes i did it - bough it today along with the 30 Chroma variants).

When I had used ProPhoto as internal Colorspace the reds looked awful and much too oversaturated.
Now with the method above I get good colors (Holmes or Prophoto doesn't make a difference here, I use Holmes for the chroma variants - looks great so far I can judge - much better than using a vibrance layer in PS)

Mark D Segal

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Re: Colormanaging scanned negatives - How to do best ?
« Reply #24 on: February 19, 2012, 02:52:50 pm »

Yup - sounds right. ProPhoto produces saturated reds from both Nikon scanners (5000 and 9000). It also did the same from the Minolta 5400 back in those days. Selecting the scanner profile at the scan stage when you are using Negafix is neither here nor there - doesn't do anything. It's the assignment and conversion you did in Photoshop that counts. Good, glad you got a usable workflow. Do you find the Holmes colour space much better for these scans than just using ARGB(98)?
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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TylerB

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Re: Colormanaging scanned negatives - How to do best ?
« Reply #25 on: February 19, 2012, 03:03:59 pm »

well... for what it's worth some of us have been experimenting with various ways to tame color neg results with color management processes, on a film batch basis. I came up with a convoluted approach that results in some of the best color I have ever produced, for one project, from Ektar 120 scans. However it's not anything really workable, and was simply one idea that will be abandoned on the way to better ideas, hopefully.
If we get something workable for humans.. it'll get posted.
In the meantime, I guess dinking with negafix (I too use Silverfast with my Howtek) and a lot of PS work is the way to go...
Tyler
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Colormanaging scanned negatives - How to do best ?
« Reply #26 on: February 19, 2012, 03:15:35 pm »

well... for what it's worth some of us have been experimenting with various ways to tame color neg results with color management processes, on a film batch basis. I came up with a convoluted approach that results in some of the best color I have ever produced, for one project, from Ektar 120 scans. However it's not anything really workable, and was simply one idea that will be abandoned on the way to better ideas, hopefully.
If we get something workable for humans.. it'll get posted.
In the meantime, I guess dinking with negafix (I too use Silverfast with my Howtek) and a lot of PS work is the way to go...
Tyler

Have you worked on customizing the preferred Negafix profile in the Expert Dialog? If you get that right, you really shouldn't need too much futzing around in Photoshop - at least for basic exposure and colour balance for the same film brand/type/ISO/batch/processor/processing date.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Christoph C. Feldhaim

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Re: Colormanaging scanned negatives - How to do best ?
« Reply #27 on: February 19, 2012, 03:43:38 pm »

Yup - sounds right. ProPhoto produces saturated reds from both Nikon scanners (5000 and 9000). It also did the same from the Minolta 5400 back in those days. Selecting the scanner profile at the scan stage when you are using Negafix is neither here nor there - doesn't do anything. It's the assignment and conversion you did in Photoshop that counts. Good, glad you got a usable workflow. Do you find the Holmes colour space much better for these scans than just using ARGB(98)?

I just bought the Holmes Chroma 100 set with the variants today and can say only one thing:
It works better if you want to adapt saturation than using vibrance / saturation  layers.
The size is similar to Prophoto, so if you want to stick with PS/LR saturation adjustments you won't need it, but my first impression is, that its worth it.
Adobe RGB drops/clips a lot of colors my scanner can reproduce, so switching to a wider gamut than AdobeRGB for scanning is a no-brainer for me.
« Last Edit: February 19, 2012, 03:46:20 pm by Christoph C. Feldhaim »
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Colormanaging scanned negatives - How to do best ?
« Reply #28 on: February 19, 2012, 04:07:25 pm »


Adobe RGB drops/clips a lot of colors my scanner can reproduce, so switching to a wider gamut than AdobeRGB for scanning is a no-brainer for me.

Yes, it is true that the gamut volume measured from the transparency profiles for the Nikon 5000 (and I assume same for your 9000) exceeds RGB(98). But once using ProPhoto, one encounters the redness issue. So if I understand correctly, you are saying that the Holmes colour space gives you the gamut volume without the redness tendency. If so, that sounds like a win-win.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Colormanaging scanned negatives - How to do best ?
« Reply #29 on: February 19, 2012, 04:13:14 pm »

Christoph,

Added question to the one above, Holme's page is really out of date, so it's not clear how compatible his profiles are with SilverFast 8 and with Photoshop CS 5. Are these the applications you are using them with?
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Christoph C. Feldhaim

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Re: Colormanaging scanned negatives - How to do best ?
« Reply #30 on: February 19, 2012, 04:21:48 pm »

I don't think the Holmes space is necessarily better than Prophoto.
The advantage of it is the chroma variants.
My impression is, that the conversion from the scanner input space into the working space in SF8 is simply bugged.
To me it looks as if Prophoto just was assigned and not converted and that the conversion did not work when using Prophoto as working colorspace in SF8.
ASSIGNING the scanner colorspace in PS and then CONVERTING to the larger gamut in PS did the trick.
This should also work with Prophoto.
I will call Lasersoft next week and ask them about it.

I mean:
What happens when we profile the scanner?
We put in a target with known XYZ/LAB values and scan it.
We get a profile which connects the numbers coming out of the scanner with the real world colors.
When suddenly after changing the colorspace a number which represents a real world red tone shows an out of bound extreme red something has gone wrong.
Since Prophoto is a wide gamut colorspace which allows these extreme reds, I believe the number which represents a sane red in the measured scanner profile/colorspace and which suddenly represents an extreme color has been wrongly converted or just been assigned.
So - basically I believe its a bug.
A conversion from a colorspace/profile which gives good color to a larger colorspace which contains the original colorspace should never lead to these extreme colors.
I tried all rendering intents, and the reds were always out of bounds - so I believe its a bug.
« Last Edit: February 19, 2012, 04:35:57 pm by Christoph C. Feldhaim »
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dmerger

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Re: Colormanaging scanned negatives - How to do best ?
« Reply #31 on: February 19, 2012, 04:44:01 pm »

My impression is, that the conversion from the scanner input space into the working space in SF8 is simply bugged.
To me it looks as if Prophoto just was assigned and not converted and that the conversion did not work when using Prophoto as working colorspace in SF8.

Same here (with an earlier version of SF).  This problem has been known and discussed for a long time.
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Dean Erger

Mark D Segal

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Re: Colormanaging scanned negatives - How to do best ?
« Reply #32 on: February 19, 2012, 05:18:41 pm »

I don't think the Holmes space is necessarily better than Prophoto.
The advantage of it is the chroma variants.
My impression is, that the conversion from the scanner input space into the working space in SF8 is simply bugged.
To me it looks as if Prophoto just was assigned and not converted and that the conversion did not work when using Prophoto as working colorspace in SF8.
ASSIGNING the scanner colorspace in PS and then CONVERTING to the larger gamut in PS did the trick.
This should also work with Prophoto.
I will call Lasersoft next week and ask them about it.

I mean:
What happens when we profile the scanner?
We put in a target with known XYZ/LAB values and scan it.
We get a profile which connects the numbers coming out of the scanner with the real world colors.
When suddenly after changing the colorspace a number which represents a real world red tone shows an out of bound extreme red something has gone wrong.
Since Prophoto is a wide gamut colorspace which allows these extreme reds, I believe the number which represents a sane red in the measured scanner profile/colorspace and which suddenly represents an extreme color has been wrongly converted or just been assigned.
So - basically I believe its a bug.
A conversion from a colorspace/profile which gives good color to a larger colorspace which contains the original colorspace should never lead to these extreme colors.
I tried all rendering intents, and the reds were always out of bounds - so I believe its a bug.

When you scan negatives in SilverFast and you use the Negative image type, this disables the effect of input profiles altogether. You can try this with a range of input profiles that you know wildly misrepresent your scanner's colour rendering behaviour when used with positives, and when used with negatives they don't make a particle of difference. In fact, in SF 6.x there wasn't even an option to adopt an input profile with the Negative film type selected. It was grayed-out in CMS. In SF8 it isn't grayed-out, but may just as well have been, because they don't do anything. Stick in <none> or a profile for the wrong scanner and the result is the same. Now, regardless of how you treat the input profile, when it comes to the internal profile (colour working space) - that selection does make a difference. If you select ARGB(98), and you have a decent NegaFix profile, the rendition comes out OK in both SilverFast and identically in Photoshop. But you'll get the Profile Mismatch warning when you open the image in Photoshop. It will tell you that the embedded profile is ARGB(98) - (not a scanner profile) which is correct, and give you the usual options. If you chose to either use the embedded profile or convert to the working space, the colour appearance remains identical, because Photoshop simply remaps those ARGB(98) values to their equivalents in ProPhoto. But by doing that of course we haven't added anything to the image. Only the scale changes. What wasn't scanned-in to begin with won't reappear now. SO, let us say we now select ProPhoto as the working space in SF8. That immediately wrecks the colours in the way we agree it does - reddish. Now, you open that wreck in Photoshop and there is no Profile Mismatch warning because there is no mismatch between the embedded profile and the working space, so you see the same wreck. So yes, definitely something is happening with ProPhoto in SilverFast. This by the way is nothing new. It has been forever so in Ai 6.x too. And perhaps before that. And they have completely re-written the code for SF8 and reviewed all the colour management stuff. Not to say what we're observing isn't a bug, but at this stage i wonder how it survived if it is. It will be interesting to hear of their explanation when you speak to them.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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MonsterBaby

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Re: Colormanaging scanned negatives - How to do best ?
« Reply #33 on: February 19, 2012, 05:56:27 pm »

regarding my post.. yes i know there are def. different orange masks (i developed some GDR orwo color negs myself).. and again.. i wont try this method as i totally agree with you that silverfast negfix is prob. all we need.. but im still pretty sure this process will work!

if i want to scan an orwo film.. of course i have to use orwo for the profile!..

but another aspect you guys talk about is the prophoto "thing" with negafix.. actually i have the feeling the whole colormanagement in silverfast doesnt work for negatives!!

i get different colors weather i use adobe s or prophoto.. although i dont assign it but use it in silverfast ist working space!.. thats a bug right?

it should always keep the konstant colors and use the scanners profile or gamut as ICC and then convert to my workin space and not asign..

thats typical to get redish reds.. if you just assign prophoto!
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sertsa

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Re: Colormanaging scanned negatives - How to do best ?
« Reply #34 on: February 19, 2012, 06:21:01 pm »

If it is a bad idea to piggyback on this thread, I will start a new one but I've been struggling with something similar.  Came across an old slide copier and have been playing with shooting my negs with my DSLR.  It works pretty well but have had no success with making a decent positive image.  Is there any way to get something workable from a raw DSLR image of a negative?  Can I feed an image into Silverfast without a scanner (seems unlikely, but have never used Silverfast) and then do as you all are doing?
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Christoph C. Feldhaim

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Re: Colormanaging scanned negatives - How to do best ?
« Reply #35 on: February 19, 2012, 06:26:27 pm »

If it is a bad idea to piggyback on this thread, I will start a new one but I've been struggling with something similar.  Came across an old slide copier and have been playing with shooting my negs with my DSLR.  It works pretty well but have had no success with making a decent positive image.  Is there any way to get something workable from a raw DSLR image of a negative?  Can I feed an image into Silverfast without a scanner (seems unlikely, but have never used Silverfast) and then do as you all are doing?

Just a wild guess but:
Maybe the heavy orange tone of the negatives somehow exceeds the gamut your DSLR can capture and you'll get some clipping and thus no good colors.

dmerger

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Re: Colormanaging scanned negatives - How to do best ?
« Reply #36 on: February 19, 2012, 06:33:35 pm »

ColorNeg/ColorPerfect is a PS plugin that may help.  I tried a demo version a while ago for scanning negatives as positives, then removing the orange mask and inverting.  I didn't work with it much and didn't get good results immediately.  Maybe with a little more learning I could have achieved better results.  http://www.c-f-systems.com/Plug-ins.html#plugdesc
« Last Edit: February 19, 2012, 06:36:28 pm by dmerger »
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Dean Erger

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Re: Colormanaging scanned negatives - How to do best ?
« Reply #37 on: February 19, 2012, 06:42:47 pm »

Just a wild guess but:
Maybe the heavy orange tone of the negatives somehow exceeds the gamut your DSLR can capture and you'll get some clipping and thus no good colors.

This may be true, but I think I'm not even getting to that point.  From this discussion I'm getting that somehow the orange cast be compensated for and then the colors inverted, you all are relying on the Silverfast scanning software to do these steps.  I guess my question is can this be done without silverfast.  What if you had a simple scanner and software and ended up with just a scan of your negative just as it is, negative and orange, in a tiff (or whatever, in my case it would be a NEF).  Is there any way to get from that to a half decent positive image?
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sertsa

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Re: Colormanaging scanned negatives - How to do best ?
« Reply #38 on: February 19, 2012, 07:30:56 pm »

ColorNeg/ColorPerfect is a PS plugin that may help.  I tried a demo version a while ago for scanning negatives as positives, then removing the orange mask and inverting.  I didn't work with it much and didn't get good results immediately.  Maybe with a little more learning I could have achieved better results.  http://www.c-f-systems.com/Plug-ins.html#plugdesc

Will look at this , thanks.
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Colormanaging scanned negatives - How to do best ?
« Reply #39 on: February 19, 2012, 10:00:34 pm »

If it is a bad idea to piggyback on this thread, I will start a new one but I've been struggling with something similar.  Came across an old slide copier and have been playing with shooting my negs with my DSLR.  It works pretty well but have had no success with making a decent positive image.  Is there any way to get something workable from a raw DSLR image of a negative?  Can I feed an image into Silverfast without a scanner (seems unlikely, but have never used Silverfast) and then do as you all are doing?

If you have the SilverFast HDR application, you can bring a TIFF file of a negative image into SilverFast HDR where the Negafix profiles are also bundled, so you could give it a try. SilverFast HDR is now available as a free pre-release download on the SilverFast website, so it is a good time to try this out because you don't need to pay anything - yet. Once they release the commercial version of the application, of course it will no longer be free. Pre-release versions have a limited life-span.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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